Brewster-Douglass Projects Demolition Proceeds

[Gannon]

I will miss these old pile o' bricks.

I've got history at that Wheeler Center, from the early 70s. Even got my picture in the paper...think it was the News...to prove it! Model Sailboat regatta, summer of 1972, Kennedy Square fountain. I won the junior division, and my across-the-street friend Chris Hawkins won the senior.

All thanks to his dad's best friend, Mr. Wilson, who ran the Wheeler Center...and helped protect THIS whitest-of-boys from getting his ass whooped by the kids from the Brewsters.

I'll come clean after all these years, though. I didn't build my own boat. Had an incident with the bandsaw, and they wouldn't let me back into the woodshop for the rest of that summer. I'm not bummed, though, I kept the thumb instead.


I punish my girlfriend by retelling the shorthand version of that story every time we pass the place, apparently. She reminded me again a few days ago, when I took my usual 'short-cut' across town.

Now that the windows are gone from the pool room, I can glimpse a hint of the high-dive platform...THE place where I discovered my fear of heights. Funny, the anxiety wants to well up even now.

Ah-h, memories.


Cheers!